Dive Brief:
- While insurers and other organizations grow increasingly interested in promoting technology to bring about health-related behavior changes, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association warns that wearable devices have the potential to facilitate health behavior change, but they do not drive it.
- Motivation is a complex issue, especially for those who need it most. "If wearable devices are to be part of the solution, they either need to create enduring new habits, turning external motivations into internal ones (which is difficult), or they need to sustain their external motivation (which is also difficult)," the study authors write.
- Wearable devices may successfully be used to engage less motivated individuals, but less because of their technology and more because of the behavioral change strategies that can be designed around them, the study concludes.
Dive Insight:
Organizations providing or promoting the use of wearable devices should focus on engagement, study authors write. Otherwise, their users may end up like the current statistic: more than 50% of those who own a wearable device stop using it, and about 33% of those stop using it within six months.
Not just any engagement strategy will do; according to the study, strategies can be designed using concepts from behavioral economics. For example, lottery-based rewards leverage the fact that people are more engaged by intermittent and variable rewards than with constant reinforcement.
In addition, wellness programs might consider giving their participants team goals, to engage all members in a positive manner, as opposed to strategies that reward only the top performers.
"Ultimately, it is the engagement strategies—the combinations of individual encouragement, social competition and collaboration, and effective feedback loops—that connect with human behavior," the study authors write.